Kissing. I’m whole-heartedly for it. Not only is it a peck of fun, but for us witches, it can be so much more. Being a mother, I’m quite familiar with kissing my son before sending him off to school, secure in the knowledge that my kiss adds a layer of protection to his day.

But kisses are amazingly multi-functional. A quick jaunt through the Googlesphere shows they can be used:

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To heal – We kiss a child’s bump or bruise to “make it better.”

To obtain poesy – To get the gift of eloquence, we kiss the Blarney Stone.

To convey good luck – We kiss on New Year’s Eve for good luck. And the first person (other than its mother) to kiss a baby, affects Baby’s luck in life.

To break an enchantment – Sleeping Beauty was awakened with a kiss. And apparently, if you kiss the right frog, he’ll turn into a prince. In these instances, it’s not just any kiss that holds the power, but the kiss of a particular person (such as a princess), or sometimes a kiss of particular virtue (such as true love’s first kiss).

To seal or imprint intent – We seal our love letters with a kiss. Kissing you’re signature in a book, or indeed kissing the Bible or other holy relic can seal your oath. As well, there’s the kiss following the giving of fealty.

Protection or Curse – Some scholars believe that all those X marks – stand-ins for our kisses — may have ties the Hebrew letter tav, and posit that the mark of Cain (placed on Cain’s forehead to keep others from killing him) was the Hebrew letter tav.

(In my ever ready imagination, I can see this transmuted into the Kiss of Piss On Off. A two-handed kiss, planted a la Michael Corleone. It would probably work a treat on all those pesky proselytizers!)

We recently purchased a piece of land. I shudder to write that, because how can anyone own a piece of land? To my witch’s sensabilities, this seems like rankest heresy.

However, by paying Babylon for it, as far as Babylon is concerned, we have a say in how it’s used. In Texas – a strange blend of Fundamentalist paradigm and mind-your-own-business — that can be a really big say.

So I’ve been spending some time this past year gently reaching out to the Spirits of Place, and in general being ignored.

Until just the other day.

Sitting quietly, thinking about eventual practical gardens and the possibility of a toolshed cumWoo Shack, I got a ping.

Filtered through my own percenptions, while trying my best to be true to the communication, it came like this:

To Strengthen the Heart of a Place:

Local is important because man‘s puny boundaries don’t mean a thing to the Land. In one sense it’s all one Land. In terms of a specific Place, though, the boundaries are arrived at differently. * (The impression I got is that the Land is all one big Titan-esque entity, and a Place has a Spirit of Place/Genius Loci.) A Place doesn’t care what the title says, or where the fences are. A Place has it’s own boundaries, based on other things like where the bodies of water are, what the terraine is like, and other things we aren’t privy to.

To maintain the best Heart to a Place, when you’re on it let your flows mingle with its flows. (As in permaculture flows — starting with what you take in as food, water, air, shelter, etc. and what you put out in wastes and effort.) Bring as little onto it as you’re able, from as close as you’re able. Local matters. Just because it’s not from your specific address, doesn’t mean it’s not within the boundaries of the Place you reside within.

Eat from it, at least in part, every day.

Everything that must come from any distance beyond it’s borders, should be changed in some fashion by the products of the Place. Fabric could be dyed with acorns/herbs from the Place. Biodegradable waste should remain on it. Take as little as possible off of it. If something can’t be modified by bits of Place, it can’t stay — it must just visit.

Come to depend on it’s flows, and let it depend upon yours.

Buildings should incorporate as much as possible from the Place.

Plants/seeds should be grown through one cycle (if annuals) or one set of seasons (a year and a day) before they’re considered part of th Place.

Change your vocabulary to support a new mindset compatible with a your new relationship. Say “the Land” or “this Place.” Don’t use “my land/house, etc. It’s shared. It’s “ours.”

Plan your flows into at least the next season, if not some for the next generation or two. Store a harvest and annual seeds. Make compost that will cure for a year or two. If you need a fence around your gardens, set the plants to they grown inside and outside of the fence. Let the same plant/berry bush, fruit tree/ patch feed both wild and tame. Both you and the wildlife. Extend that idea to the public/man-made corridors like roads, so that passersby can share in yields as well.

Remember flows include things like the sun, moon and stars that shine upon the Place. They live on the Place when they shine there. Remember too that lines of sight are shared with neighbors. So a private/sacred space should be shielded.

Restrict where cars/fumes/strangers go. Make such things acknowledge that they are crossing a threshold, and that the rules have changed.

Let there be cross-throughs on the Place for wildlife as much as possible.

Get a yield – give a yield.

Not connecting your flows to a Place makes you a visitor. You have less duties and responsibilities, but less rights, too. Like the difference between dating and marrying. Between acquaintance and friend.

Be trustworthy. Be consistent in your attachment. If your actions aren’t loving, trustworthy and inclusive, how can you have a relationship? It’s holding the Land / the Place in bondage against its Will.

When you are doing all that, then take it a step further. Think about what you can do to create your own niche within the Place that would be helpful to the whole (as a partner, not an overlord). What can no one else on the Place currently do that you can? This step takes your relationship to the next level. You become more that a denizen. You mean more to the Place. Look at the whole of the Place, observe how it wants to be, and arrange for those desires of Place to be successful and balanced. The flow of a Place is constant. It’s changing by the hour, day, year, century.

When you have a need, look first to your Place, and the nearby Places to fill that need. Where you find gaps, consider filling them by respectfully introducing new plants, habitats, etc. to the Place. Be this food, medicine, clothing, shelter, or community.

When you’re a parent and and witch, you rather hope your offspring will follow in your footprints. But — just as it should be — my son has always been his own person, with his own path to follow. One that doesn’t usually coincide with mine.

So it was a proud day when I came upon my son looking up dirty nun jokes on the internet.

Before you start hitting your back button, take heart. It all had to do with Squat, the Goddess of parking spots.

My son explained he was entering the lottery for a parking place at school (there aren’t enough spaces for everyone). And he needed to appeal to Squat, Goddess of parking places, for Her help.

Awww … it makes a Mother proud.

And in case you don’t know Squat, the folks that call upon Her swear She’s very helpful. I understand from my own HPS, she is especially revered in San Francisco, where to invoke Her you say:

Squat, Squat I like you a lot
I think you’re hot
Help me get a parking spot!

Okay. Maybe not all of those examples are of witches. But when you think of the Sabbat, what visual do you flash to? Probably you imagine folks (possibly without any cloths on) out in nature, dancing in a ring. Bonfire optional. There is an undeniable witchiness about dance.

And that makes perfect sense to me. Dancing puts me in touch with my creative, intuitive self. Dancing lets me interact with the other dancers a primal way. Dancing raises the energy level, be it in ritual or rave. I feels as if I’ve always known this. Always loved this.

I recently had an “ah-ha” moment about dance when I fell upon a line in Peter Grey’s Apocalyptic Witchcraft. In writing about the concept of sabbat, he says “Begin to move towards, be moved by the blind magnetic blood.”

Oh. Magnetic blood.

In a rite, when you slice with a knife or shift a cauldron, you move the energy inhabiting the space. You consciously change the energy flow to work your will. You shod the stang with iron, to fix its energy in place.

You move your body, filled with iron-rich blood, in a ring. Pacing, spinning, leaping in the same direction, like salmon swimming upstream. Faster and faster. Whipping the energy

up

and up

and out.

It makes perfect sense. I’ll never again take up a witches’ dance without thinking about it this way. Or for that matter, watch a parade, or the scene from The Wickerman where the children carry Death out of the village. I now know a deeper purpose to our dance.

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And since I mentioned it here, I highly recommend Peter Grey’s Apocalyptic Witchcraft. Don’t be sidetracked by what you think the title is saying; read the book and find out for yourself. Read it for it’s many seed pearls of insight, which take root in and grow into unbidden understandings. Read it for it’s lush poetical style.

Or better yet — as Grey proposes in regards to the relationship between the sabbat and the mythic landscape — enter into “The wordless book, which falls open and you with it, into the very last page.”

I’m not ashamed to admit it. While the majority of the magical work I do is for the benefit my family, I tend to think of them as being mostly outside the magical loop.

But I’ve been thinking about this lately.

Earlier in the week, a friend and I stepped out onto the cool night grass, spun the Full Moon into a bowl of water, and bathed in it. It was glorious.

(By the way, for those of you who are drawn to witchcraft, but feel you don’t have enough time for it, Spinning the Moon is a good one for you. It has minimal set up, and could — however damply — be well done with all your clothes on in the space of a few minutes.)

I saved some of the water in my bowl, and later anointed my family members with it — my moist hand on their cheek during a kiss.

(Well … I guess my family are in the loop a bit.)

Do I make specific mention of these monthly anointings to them? No. And I don’t see that omission as any sort of betrayal. My role within our family is to do those things I believe will promote our health and well-being. I don’t ask their permission before serving up mounds of vegetables; nor do I feel any need to tell them when they’re bathing in the moon. It’s all part of the package.

Outside of my immediate family, I’d feel differently. Those relationships have different rights, privileges and duties, which might not include acting unilaterally in their best interest. But I digress …

Later this week, family will be coming for a Halloween party. Not coven family (we’ll be having a different sort of party later). It will be my siblings, nieces and nephews. We’ll play games, eat food, drink really good beer and coffee, and talk until the Eyes of Night Herself start blinking.

We’ll have pictures of our Beloved Dead out, with plates alongside their pictures, so they can share in the feast. They’ll be toasted and remembered. It’s not something we’ve specifically discussed as being Craft-related. I suppose my family just assumes it’s close to All Saints’ Day, and how lovely to do it while we’re all together to share reminiscences.

(Ok. Perhaps my family is “in the loop” a bit more than I thought.)

For dessert, we have a cake, thickly iced and done up with ribboned charms. The custom of charm cakes is an old one — think Kings Cake or the cake pulls of Southern weddings. I remember reading somewhere that finding your fortune by charms in a cake at All Hallows was also a Victorian tradition, but couldn’t find a reference for that on the fly …

Our cake differs from others, in that there are more charms that folks present, and the charms that aren’t pulled are cast into a body of water. Because when you make one choice you are, of necessity, giving up others.

(Alright. I’ll admit it. My family is so far into the loop, they might well be wearing the it like a bow.)

I must have become inured to just how much crossover there it between my lone work, my coven work and my surprisingly craft-saturated family culture.

I guess that’s why they call it the “Cunning Arts.” You rarely see it coming for you!

We witches love our books. And we love to buy, read, praise/bitch about, prominently display, lord over our friends and prop up one end of the bed with our many, many occult books. Although not necessarily in that order.

Rarely in that order.

Be that as it may, never before have we been so spoiled for choice in publishers of our kind of books.

For our collective convenience and browsing pleasure, below are icons for a big handful of occult publishers. (I should probably say here that I am receiving no recompense of any kind from these folks.) This isn’t an exhaustive list; rather a lovely sampling. Let the book ogling commence!